Airport Passenger Profiling -- Not So Simple

the Monitor's Board, The Christian Science Monitor

A new poll shows 70 percent of Americans support profiling that
singles out terrorist suspects for extra screening. What's the best
way to profile?

Must the entire flying public in America be subject to stepped-
up screening: full-body image scanners or aggressive pat downs? What
if security officials reserved that more intense search for
terrorist suspects?

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Nov. 23 shows that 70
percent of Americans support "profiling people, using available
information about passengers in order to determine who gets selected
for extra security screening at airports."

Profiling - famous in Israel - is often discussed as an
alternative to the all-passenger strategy in the United States.

It's important to distinguish between smart profiling, and the
ineffective kind. Tempting as it may be, profiling based on race,
religion, gender, and even country is not efficient.

Male, Muslim, and Arab, for instance, is simply too broad a
category to be of much use. Those characteristics may accurately
identify a person, but they don't predict behavior. The vast
majority of people who fit that description are not terrorists.

That profile also has glaring exceptions: "Jihad Jane," the
blond, middle-aged white American; the female "black widow" Muslim
bombers of the Moscow Metro; Richard Reid, the half-West Indian,
half-Englishman with a British passport and English accent to match. …

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